film

On the Fringe is a loving tribute to the un-curated magic of Fringe festivals across the country.

Dutch director Colette Bothof and acclaimed screenwriter Marjolein Bierens have created an incredible coming-of-age story of outgrowing small-town life, awakening to one’s sexuality and finding love. The cinematographer, Goert Giltay, does an incredible job with the images, the colours, and in creating a domineering visual presence of the power plant, which is a central motif […]

This story, told retrospectively as a memory by Oat, a young man who remembers his eleven year old self living in poverty in the outskirts of Bangkok, is the most touching narrative on fraternal love at this year’s Inside Out Festival. Oat’s older brother, Ek, is gay and surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be any […]

Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki’s The Girl King gives a modern rendering of Queen Kristina’s unorthodox sexual appetites and socio-political vision for Sweden in the middle of the 17th century. The natural body and the body politic collide as the young Queen goes counter-current and attempts to bring educational reforms while trying to end the Thirty […]

Among the films on show at this year’s Ottawa International Film Festival Kenneth Elvebakk’s Ballet Boys is one that immediately catches the eye. The film which follows three boys who work towards making their dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer a reality has already racked up a long list of awards and nominations around […]

Some might say that an aspiring filmmaker would be better served skipping film school and taking a bar job instead. Ottawa’s own Cody Campanale, whose debut feature film Jackie Boy gets it’s Canadian premiere this weekend at the Ottawa International Film Festival, took an altogether different route to the director’s chair. “I was working as […]

The Ottawa International Film Festival (OIFF) is preparing for what will be its sixth year. On October 17th and 18th, the festival, held at Cineplex Lansdowne, will showcase over 50 productions from 13 countries, as well as informative panels that will appeal to industry insiders and film buffs alike. With that much on display, there […]

Ottawa’s LGBT film festival, Inside Out, runs from October 22 to 25 this year and you’re not going to want to miss the incredible line-up of films by talented writers, directors and actors from all over the world. For titles, check out the festival’s calendar. Apt613 will also be posting reviews of certain films in […]

Today we bring you the fifth episode in Jith Paul’s series, Ottawa Indie Film. This installment features Roger D. Wilson. Roger’s films have screened at festivals across Canada. Roger describes himself as an experimental film scientist.  His films are infused with thematically-related techniques such as layering images, adding textures and hand processing and printing the […]

Vanessa Rotondo is an Ottawa-based freelance writer, national spoken word artist and youth outreach coordinator/arts educator. You can follow her on Twitter. We know the Irish for their Celtic countryside roots, legged in Riverdance and legends of Loch Ness, knotted by generations of bred in the bone talented poets and storytellers. From March 27th – […]

We catch up with Emily Pelstring,  co-curator of By Any Means, an animation program that screened last Friday night at Club SAW. The event features women animators taking on a wide range of stories, in a wide range of aesthetics made within a DIY ethos. Listen to Apt613 Live on CHUO 89.1 FM every Tuesday […]

The Canadian Film Institute brings international contemporary cinema to town in partnership with Winterlude and the Baltic and Nordic countries. This year marks the 5th Baltic-Nordic Film Festival. Eight countries will be showcasing their best features from Friday, February 6 to Saturday, February 14 at Carleton University’s River Building. One movie per night will play […]

As the European Union film festival comes to a close, I highly recommend Thursday night’s animated feature, Rocks in My Pockets. The artist-director Signe Baumane says, “I sometimes call it ‘a funny film about depression’ but it is not always funny and not always about depression. It is a family’s history of mental breakdowns from […]

It’s rare to see dramas incorporate metaphysical elements of the kind that remind me of the Mexican-Spanish film by Inarritu, Biutiful, whose main character was a sick, poor and desperate man with a gift: seeing the dead and helping them transition to the other side. Here, in Mon âme par toi guérie, the main character, […]

This 2012 film co-written and directed by Patrice Toye is so much more than a coming of age story. Set in the late seventies in Belgium, the film follows Katja, whose real name is Katerina, a 17-year old orphan who is pregnant and living in hiding with other teenage moms-to-be in the attic of a […]